Book reviews and other musings from a bibliophile and self-proclaimed geek.

A Bloody Deadly Homecoming

High school, vampires, a dance, and the fate of (immortal) life and death for two girls sealed by a money/popularity contest.

In Spencer Baum’s The Homecoming Masquerade, Jill Wentworth is a computer genius, taking after her parents, who works discreetly for the Network, which is infiltrating the local school for the wealthy, Thorndale, in the aims to take down the immortals, a.k.a. vampires, reigning supreme over the nation by controlling humans. With Thorndale’s homecoming kicking off the Coronation ceremony, where senior girls compete to raise the most money to become immortal…and the loser is the winner’s first meal. Entering into this elite competition for the Network is Nicky Bloom, hopefully the ringer who will succeed in beating the shoo-in Kim Renwick who desperately wants to become immortal.

Written in a roving third person omniscient style, this first book acts to set up the plot for the subsequent books rather well whilst maintaining reader attention with an interesting concept that modifies the traditionally seen high school vampire stories. From what’s in the text, I have to believe that people are aware of the vampires’ existence and fear them, but I felt that it wasn’t horribly clear the extent to which their existence was known. For instance, when Nicky gets into the car accident the others involved instantly know that she should not be messed with because she’s dressed in the black dress as a Coronation entrant; but do these citizens fear her because she has money and, subsequently, power or because of the vampires that are behind it all?